Design Thinking for Innovation by University of Virginia (Coursera)

This Course in Design Thinking has been developed at the Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia and taught by world-class faculty. It is ranked as one of the best Coursera Design Thinking courses. Design Thinking involves processes and set of tools that help us to become innovative and successfully creative. This course is around these processes and toolkit and their application in organizational situations.

This Design Thinking course is suitable not only for people in business but anyone who has a problem and would like to know a creative approach for solving that problem. The learners work with a model containing following four key questions and several tools to help them understand design thinking as a problem solving approach.

• What is going on today
• In an ideal world what would we like to create tomorrow
• What will really work for the people who help us create it
• What happens when we actually try out a small experiment in the marketplace to see what works

Associated with these 4 questions, participants learn a set of tools that together help them to become innovative thinkers. The course also discusses several stories from different organizations that used design thinking to uncover compelling solutions. It ends with a final assignment requiring students to select one of the design thinking tools presented in the course, write a reflection, and complete three peer reviews.

Design Thinking is best learnt by doing it. So this course encourages participants to find an area of opportunity or problem in their business life or home life that they’d like to solve and then work towards it as the course progresses.

Darden School of Business is a leader in innovative online learning, and its offerings are a key component of the world’s best business education experience. The instructor of this course Jeanne M. Liedtka is a very accomplished professor and former chief learning officer at United Technologies Corporation. She has done a ton of research in the area of Design Thinking and authored several popular books on this subject.

Key Highlights

• Most popular Design Thinking Course on Coursera with maximum student enrolments
• Understand what design thinking is and when to use it and how to use the Visualization tool
• Learn to use design thinking to generate innovative ideas and how to use the Mind Mapping tool
• Understand how to take the many ideas you generate and determine which ones are likely to produce specific, desired outcomes
• Abundance of case studies, readings, and activities that help learners uncover creative thinking, innovation and opportunities
• Learn how to prepare to see and take action when opportunity arises and how to use the Storytelling tool
• Understand how to use the Learning Launch tool

Duration : 4 weeks, 2-3 hours per week

Sign up Here